Today was Freedom Day in Malawi, when they celebrate the beginning of democracy in the country. Subsequently, there were no classes and few workers in the village. We took advantage of the time off to go in to Mzuzu to a couple markets and the grocery. The market was a veritable maze of stands lined up side-by-side, selling anything from beans and rice to cell phones to cast-off American merchandise from the 1980’s. It was all open to the air with a dirt floor and mostly smelled of mildew. This is where the ROS do most of their grocery shopping for each week, especially for fruit. I was disappointed that they didn’t have any mango (not in season), but they did have some amazing pineapple—some of the best I’ve ever tasted.
We then traveled to the main grocery store in town, which actually looked pretty modern, except for the selection. For example, for deli meats this week they had pastrami. That’s it. But if you’d rather have honey ham, well, try again next week. The really interesting bit, however, was what waited outside the grocery: young teens selling canvas paintings, cards, necklaces, and bracelets. It was my first experience of saying no to a Malawian salesperson, but I’m sure it won’t be the last. It’s not easy to do that, however, when I consider the disparity between their position in life and my own. What does make it easy, however, is that I didn’t bring much cash with me on this trip, and I want to save it for when I find some things that I really want.
This was the case at our next destination, the fabric market. For the sake of surprising Maria, I won’t describe anything that I bought, but I think she’ll like it!
In the early afternoon, we had some time to just to ourselves, but David asked for some help setting up some more wiring of the house-to-house network. It’s actually really fun and satisfying to help set up electrical projects, even if I don’t have the knowledge or expertise to devise them myself yet.
Later, Ralph Marron, the Village Director, and his wife Bonnie took the Standard 1 class (1st grade) out on a hike, and most of us from TCBC went with them. We walked along the ridge of a nearby hill, and from time to time we could see the Rafiki village from a distance. The walk was like any mile-long hike one might take in the U.S. with a bunch of 7 year-olds: a lot of running around and yelling, but generally moving in the right direction. We would often pass the homes of some Malawian families, and I was struck again by how bear-bones their existence is here. But the people that we saw along the walk did not seem to despise us for the apparent disparity in wealth; rather they greeted us much the same way they would greet peers, it seems to me.
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